A Thousand Roads Home. Carmel Harrington

eyes on him, as he picked up his new football shirt, and a lump jumped into his throat. His mam must have been saving for ages to get him that jersey. It was the real deal. Not a cheap copy from the market. He pulled a strip out of the book and handed it to her.

      Ruth folded it in two, then placed it in her jeans pocket. She opened her arms to her son and held him close in her embrace, breathing in his unique smell. Mud, milk, bananas and tonight, because of his earlier treat, pepperoni pizza.

      Ruth knew that there would come a day when raffle tickets would no longer be needed. Previous years she had to buy new books halfway through the year, such was the demand for her cuddles. But when she had checked her son’s bedside locker last week, she realised that a quarter of his ninth birthday book was unused. She closed her mind to that. Because right now in this moment, she was his and he was hers.

      ‘Hey! How did you do that?’ DJ asked when the lights in the flat went out.

      Ruth’s stomach sank. Not again. She stood up and counted her steps to the kitchen. She continued counting until she got to eight, then pulled open a drawer, reaching for her torch. She flicked it on and investigated the ESB box. Please let it be a trip switch. Her silent pleas fell on deaf ears. All switches were upright and correct. ‘We have been cut off.’

      ‘It doesn’t matter,’ DJ said by her side, reaching for her hands that had begun to fly in frustration at this turn of events. ‘We can watch the movie another time.’

      ‘I get paid tomorrow. I was going to pay the bill then.’ Ruth popped her knuckles in frustration. Her phone pinged to let her know she had a text message, its blue light flashing on the kitchen table. It was from Seamus Kearns, her landlord.

      I will be calling at the flat next Friday at 6pm.

      She turned her phone upside down.

      ‘All OK?’

      Ruth nodded and pushed aside a niggling feeling of unease. This was DJ’s night. Ruth would deal with the landlord tomorrow.

      ‘We can still eat cake, even in the dark!’ DJ said, pulling two plates from the cabinet.

      Ruth held the torch over her son as he cut a large wedge of the cake. Then he reached up into the larder press and felt his way until he found his target. Rice cakes. He took two out and put them on the second plate. Ruth grabbed a bag of tea lights and lit a dozen of them, placing them around the sitting room. They sat side by side on the small sofa, balancing their treats on their knees. With a mouthful of the cake, DJ said, ‘Knew it. Tastes great.’

      Ruth shuddered just thinking about putting a mouthful of that green mess into her mouth. Knowing how hard it must have been for his mother to touch food that wasn’t white, DJ said, ‘I can’t believe you made this cake for me, Mam.’

      ‘I would do anything for you, DJ. Always remember that.’ And they inched a little closer to each other.

      His eyes, now accustomed to the near darkness, took in the birthday banners that hung from each corner of the room. The multi-coloured balloons that seemed to dance in the candlelight. The empty pizza box. The gifts. His mam. And while he didn’t know it yet, this birthday was the one that, for the rest of his life, he would look back on as his best.

       2

       RUTH

      The day Ruth Wilde and her son, DJ, became homeless was just an ordinary day in Dublin. The sun poked its head through the grey clouds of an autumnal sky. Cars drove by at a snail’s pace, bumper to bumper in their early morning commute.

      One, two, three … Ruth began counting steps to herself as she walked down the driveway in front of her flat.

      For most, it was just another thank-crunchie-it’s-Friday morning in the suburbs. For Ruth it was a day of despair. Her world, her normal, was falling apart. She was not prepared for the unknown future that lay ahead. With every change that was flung at her, she felt like she was moving closer to the edge of an abyss.

       … ten, eleven, twelve …

      And for Ruth, who lived her life in quiet, isolated order with her son, the abyss looked impossible to cross. Taking a leap of faith was not in her psyche. Ruth needed to prepare, to understand, to know before she undertook anything new. That way she had time to build a bridge, if you like, that would take her safely to the other side.

       … nineteen, twenty, twenty-one …

      She looked up and down the road, seeing it with new eyes that told her danger lay ahead.

       … twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven …

      The end of the driveway. She took one more step, then breathed the last number with relief.

      Twenty-eight. As it should be; as it had been for four years now.

      Ruth placed two black sacks beside the ugly but serviceable suitcases she’d left there moments before. Not much to show for her thirty years in this world. Running her hands over the cases, she felt a moment of sympathy for them. When it came to the luggage lottery they lucked out. While other suitcases got to travel the world, hers were used only to transport meagre possessions from rented house to rented house. So many moves over the past ten years since they arrived in Dublin. The plan had been to stay here until they were given a council house. Now there was a new plan. She just did not know what it was yet.

      Ruth felt her son’s presence before she saw him. He had this weird energy lately that filled the air between them: a mixture of disappointment, anger and, she supposed, fear. None of which she knew how to alleviate.

      ‘You should be in school,’ Ruth said, watching the patterns of the cracks in the pavement. She had dropped him there earlier this morning, then went for her usual early morning run. She never needed the escapism running gave her more than she did today.

      His response was to kick the concrete path with the toe of his scuffed runners. He’d had another growth spurt over the past couple of weeks. School tracksuit bottoms were almost at the point of embarrassment for him, barely grazing the tops of his shoes. She would have to get to Penneys at some point to pick up a pair. And then a thought hit her hard. How will I clean his uniform if we have no home of our own, no washing machine?

      She felt guilt flood over her again. She had let him down just as her mother had predicted she would. A spectacular failure of a parent. She cracked the knuckle on her ring finger and felt tension release as she heard a familiar pop, pop, pop.

      ‘Sorry,’ she said, when DJ made a face. She knew the noise irritated him. But this quirk had been embedded in her for as long as she had a memory. It proved hard to say goodbye to.

      ‘Why are you looking all weird at the cases?’ DJ asked. He gave the one nearest to him a kick.

      ‘I feel sorry for them,’ Ruth said, pushing them away from DJ’s feet, which were hell-bent on causing damage right now.

      ‘That’s weird. You do know that, right?’ DJ asked.

      ‘Yes.’

       You used to like my weirdness. Please do not stop.

      ‘Is that it, then? We’re really leaving now?’ DJ said.

      ‘Yes.’ Her culpability crippled her. She had promised him that they were done moving around when they had found this flat four years previously. But she made that promise without the knowledge that eviction lay in their future.

      ‘I never liked it here anyway. It’s a dump,’ DJ lied.

      ‘I liked it,’ Ruth answered softly. ‘And while it was not much, it was our dump.’

      ‘So what next?’ His voice made a lie of his earlier bravado, the tremor showing his truth. He was